Gauntlet
by Laryna6
Summary: The noblesse said that M-24 wanted to sleep beside M-21. Now M-21 needs to find out what a soul weapon is and how to take care of one because maybe, if he's lucky, he might hear his comrade's voice again someday.
1. Chapter 1

M-21 knelt in front of the rocks that meant he couldn't even hold M-24 as he died. Just like so many of them had died alone. Or worse, in the hands of the scientists.

He heard light footsteps behind him, but even when everything turned bloody he didn't do anything but cry. It wasn't like it mattered if he died now, he thought, knowing that even by thinking that he'd let M-24 down. Again.

He'd go on, for them, if these people didn't kill him, but right now…

"This way," the noblesse who'd killed Jake said, reaching out to the pile.

M-21 stared at him, first shocked and then in wild hope.

Except the rocks didn't move, M-24 didn't walk out of there. An orb of white light that was red around the edges floated out of them. The edges were ragged, and the way it was moving and bobbing almost seemed like it was limping towards the noblesse's hand.

Red eyes looked down at it as it floated above his hand, then he nodded.

"Master?" the other noblesse said – when had he arrived?

The Master turned to M-21. "Your friend wishes to sleep by your side."

"Sleep?" Was that a euphemism? Did it mean dead anyway, was M-24 a ghost?

"Like the soul weapons, Master?" asked the blond.

The one holding M-24 nodded at him.

Soul weapon? Were they going to use M-24? "Give him here," M-21 said, scrambling up to reach for him.

When his hand was close enough, the little ball floated the rest of the way – good, M-21 hadn't wanted to risk getting in that noblesse's personal space. Even if he would have, for M-24, if M-24 wasn't entirely gone, if M-21 wasn't alone…

He felt more than heard the breathing, the rise and fall of a big chest. Familiar from when they had to huddle together – the labs were always kept cold. The breathing was slow – yes, just like M-24 when he was asleep.

M-21 wanted to demand answers, to ask if it really was him, but… he knew. This was his comrade.

"He isn't… quite in eternal sleep," the blond said thoughtfully. "His soul is human and changeable enough that he might wake up at some point. Temporarily at first, and soul weapons can only manifest for so long… But the data I have isn't quite applicable to this. I don't have any definite answers."

"If you call, he will answer," the other said, voice full of certainty. "He will need the help of your power, but the source of your power is not inconsiderable."

"M-24?" M-21 said to the empty air. "M-24!" Please. Please answer me.

A low noise of complaint, half-growl because it was better to be threatening in the Union even if it would get them laughed at and beaten up by the other agents to prove their dominance. M-24 needed more sleep than M-21 did, maybe because of why he still needed the drugs… M-21 tried to make sure he got it, in hopes it'd help him heal up somehow. He didn't want to wake M-24 when he was tired like that, but…!

He couldn't help staring down at the hand where the light entered his palm, nudging it forward like he was pushing at a shoulder with his fist.

This got a rush of quickly-hidden alarm, M-24 trying to drag himself awake because if M-21 was panicked it couldn't be good.

" _No,_ " M-21 said, letting a breath out. " _No, it's fine. Go back to sleep."_

Then what'd M-21 tried so hard to wake him up for? M-24's balance of worry and annoyance (not at M-21, at the Union and their lives) wasn't enough to overcome his need to sleep and M-21 felt him surrendering to unconsciousness again.

"Frankenstein, the children."

"Yes, Master. I'll bring them home and make sure they're alright."

What. M-21 glanced at them, and saw the blond – Frankenstein – straightening up from a bow and going over to those kids. Were they annoying him now? He should be glad, he didn't want them interested in him, but M-24. He wanted answers: what did he do to take care of his friend? He snorted: he should know better than to expect to get them. "What about me – us?" he asked, swallowing, wishing he could demand an answer.

"If you want to come with us to be sure they're alright, feel free," the blond said. "If you no longer have the safehouse key and information, I have more at my house."

They'd hidden it. Couldn't have it found on them. "We should go with you," M-21 said, wiping his eyes and standing up. M-24 would want to be sure the kids were okay when it was their fault they were in danger.

"Alright," the blond said, looking down at the four children and hesitating. "Would you mind carrying one of them?"

They'd trust him with that? "Sure," M-21 said, wondering what he was doing. But M-24 would want them to be okay, even if M-21 couldn't do anything to protect him.

M-24 might have a little brother of his own out there… Maybe, maybe he could still see him someday? These guys might know how to make that possible.

M-21 went with them.

* * *

"Wait, you're not going to…" Attack a Union base?

"We can't have them knowing about us," Frankenstein pointed out. "And, the kids might be in danger."

So M-21 ended up following them to the South Korean base. He couldn't let them get themselves killed before he got answers… and if they really could take out Dr. Crombel, M-21 wanted to be there to see it. And see if he could ask that bastard some questions first.

* * *

He had to take care of the infected, deal with the mess M-24 made before it threatened the kids again or M-24 work up to see it, but he was too weak! Always too weak, was M-24 going to die with him, again?

"You are not weak," the noblesse said, frowning.

M-21 stared at him.

"The source of your power is not insignificant." After M-21 looked at him blankly for a moment more, Raizel asked, "Would you like to see?"

"Whatever," M-21 said. Just… he needed the power to beat this guy.

The noblesse stepped forward, reached out to swipe a finger through M-21's blood. He brought it to his lips… no, below them. "Awaken," he said, and M-21 roared, bashing his fists together.

When they didn't reach each other, when the shock was distributed through his hands and forearms as he heard the sound of clashing metal, he'd expected it somehow.

He – _they_ – lunged towards the infected.

* * *

"Are you okay with me staying here?" M-21 asked.

"Master has decided that you may remain here as long as you like," Frankenstein said, smiling at him.

"Sure, that makes sense. You don't want me to leave," and get captured, "when I know about you guys. So you're going to lock me up?"

They both stared at him as though he was saying something that had never even occurred to them and they found it shocking. "What?" he asked.

"I never said you couldn't leave," the blond told him.

"What, like you trust me?" Even if he wasn't going to betray them now, not when he needed to know about M-24.

"I never said I trusted you," Frankenstein said, still looking a little confused.

"So what then?"

"It doesn't matter whether or not I trust you," the noblesse said, and smiled like the sun. "Only Master's will matters."

Brainwashing and mind control were M-21's first thoughts, and then he remembered when M-24 decided to protect the kids. It didn't matter if M-21 thought it was a good idea or even if it was survivable. It was what M-24 wanted to do that mattered. M-24 was his comrade, and M-21 would be there for him no matter what.

They were vampires, but M-24's modifications were based on them, and he'd been able to sense them before. Maybe they'd make sense to M-21's comrade. "So what about M-24?" he asked.

They looked at each other. "He's welcome here as well?" the blond ventured. "He lost his body protecting the children, and he wouldn't be the only soul weapon under this roof."

"What's a soul weapon?"

"Among nobles…" another glance at the black-haired one, who ignored them, focusing on his tea. "Normally soul weapons are born of a parent's love for their child. When a clan leader enters eternal sleep, they can join with the clan's soul weapon to support the next clan leader's will to protect. There are some soul weapons that don't fit that pattern, but if you and M-24 were close, and he was originally human, human souls are adaptable. Master may have shown him the pattern of a soul weapon so he had a way to remain with you."

The Master nodded and drank his tea.

"Summoning a soul weapon gives nobles access to more power, but it's a strain even for pureblood nobles. After a fight like that, you should rest up before you try to summon him again."

"What if I don't want a weapon?" What if he wanted M-24 back?

"Well, there is a case of an embodied soul weapon," Frankenstein said carefully. "I certainly don't think it's impossible, but you should take it very slowly. The Union is as incompetent as ever if changing someone from human baseline more than once is some kind of breakthrough." He looked at M-21 with concern. "I'm sure your…"

"Comrade. We're comrades."

"Your comrade wouldn't want you to strain something and hurt yourself. If you're willing to wait until you've put some more weight on and your condition is improved, I can help you learn how to summon him without Master's help."

"You'd do that for me?"

"You two did save the children's lives."

"After we put them in danger."

"Master guided M-24 to you, and then awakened you both. If he thinks that was worth doing, I won't let his effort go to waste." The man smiled, then paused. "A soul weapon is a big responsibility, however. Why don't I make you an offer?"

"What is it?"

"I manage a school that Master and the children attend, and it has private security. It's not a secret organization or anything, all the people who work there are normal. But the children have been in danger from those who weren't."

"You want me to work there?"

The noblesse nodded consideringly. "If you're able to do the job responsibly, then I think you'll be responsible with what you do with your comrade's soul. And if you're protecting the children, then teaching you things that will help you survive whatever fights you get into on the job until I can get there would be my responsibility as your employer."

M-21 nodded, face serious.

Ignoring them, the other noblesse sipped his tea.

Frankenstein's phone rang. "Master, it's Shinwoo."

Raizel took the phone, listened to it upside down, then put it down on the table without hanging up.

M-21 hadn't done anything like that despite the memory wipes, but there was a lot of stuff he'd had to learn. Phones were part of the general information they'd retained, but it made sense a noblesse might not know human things like that.

And then there was the automatic door.

"Shinwoo wants to meet me."

"Pardon."

"He said he's bored."

Shinwoo was the red-headed kid. He'd gone though all that, and he remembered so little that he could be _bored_?

Real noblesses' mind control was way beyond what M-24 could do, huh. Even if M-24 had trained him to resist mind control, he'd need to watch out.

* * *

"So?" M-21 asked, hands in his pockets after his first day of school.

"How do you feel about ramyeon?" Frankenstein asked him.

"What?"

"I could use another set of tastebuds to help me test the ramyeon recipes I'm making for Master. You're welcome to eat dinner with us, of course, and I'll give you an advance on your salary to buy food elsewhere if you'd be more comfortable, but the human body needs adequate calories, fat, protein and sleep to heal and grow. If you've been developing more power over time, stuffing yourself before you go to bed might be worth trying for a couple of weeks to see if that helps you stabilize."

M-21's eyes narrowed, then he snorted at himself. "No point in asking if it's drugged. You wouldn't have to trick me into doing whatever it takes to see M-24 again."

The noblesse stared at him again. "Why on earth would… Drugs interfere with your system," he said slowly, for M-21's benefit. "This can be beneficial when a body needs the help, but you need to get an idea of what your healthy baseline is. What kind of power you have access to and how far you can push yourself. If you need a drug to be stable, what happens if summoning your comrade boosts your enhanced healing enough to clear your system of the drug? Your situation is already atypical. Let's not raise the odds of something going wrong."

He paused. "If you like, I could show you how to check your vitals. Nobles are different from humans, so I have some equipment that should let you take a look at your friend's energies."

He had a lab with equipment as good as anything in the Union, that was what he had.

"It's not as though we can go to an ordinary hospital," Frankenstein pointed out.

M-21 glared at him.

"I suppose it's not worth pretending I'm not a scientist when the Union set out to blacken my name after I killed a few thousand of them… I'm retired these days," he said, going to sit down at the computer. "Master has forbidden me from experimenting to give myself more power."

"So you experimented on humans, or nobles?"

"I experimented on nobles – I needed the data to modify myself."

Right, M-24 thought – what would experimenting on humans tell a noble?

"My victims were criminals who dealt with the Union – they were going to be forced into eternal sleep regardless, I felt that someone should get some use out of them. Not that I modified them the way the Union does with test subjects, I wasn't going to let criminals have the fruit of my research. But, Master ordered me to stop before I made myself any more terrifying than I already am." He sighed, typing. "I miss the discovery… It's not fun anymore these days, Google makes things too easy."

What the hell was he talking about? A non-Union search engine wouldn't have anything on noblesse. "What are you writing?" That, M-21 wanted to know. Was he keeping records on M-21?

"A guide to using the equipment you might find useful, and what to do with the readings."

"Like what?"

"Like do the values remain steady, fluctuate, increase or decrease, and what does that means about your condition and M-24's." He kept typing rapidly.

"What's wrong with M-24?"

"He's not in danger or I'm sure that Master will let us know – he can see souls," Frankenstein said offhand. "But I'm sure you'd rather not take our word for it, and I'd like you to know how to check your condition before and after working on manifesting a soul weapon. Much of this is unprecedented."

He finally stopped typing and a hum started – a printer. "Would you mind taking a look through this and telling me if there's anything I need to clarify?" Frankenstein asked, handing him a booklet.

M-21 took it and started to read it suspiciously. 'Guide to Medical Equipment for M-21 & M-24,' huh?

Seeing M-21's gaze linger on the front page, Frankenstein explained that, "If you can sense him, some kind of psychic communication might be easier than manifesting a soul weapon, once he's able to wake up. In the other human soul weapon I know of, the souls are always awake and able to talk, but it's rather different from your comrade's situation."

So not much help then.

The constant undertone of 'you're going to have to work this out for yourself' was a lot more reassuring than being told all this would be _handled_ if he did what the scientist noblesse told him to do. M-21 and M-24 were used to having to do everything for themselves – everything that wasn't done _to_ them. This was something he wanted, so of course he was the only one who would make it happen.

"One thing," Frankenstein said.

M-21's gaze whipped to him.

"Please don't bring the guide to the school. I'd rather not have the children exposed to anything that might make them valuable to the Union."

That made sense. A place with high-tech machines that could handle noblesse and modified humans like this, and then they killed Union agents and strolled into a Union base? The Union would want to capture them a lot more than M-21.

M-21 they might hopefully just kill without finding out he was worth dragging into a lab. No, they'd interrogate him to find out anything he knew about these noblesse, and if they found out about M-24…

No. He wouldn't let them.

"Would you mind trying some ramyeon while you read?" Frankenstein asked when he didn't leave the lab.

"Whatever," M-21 said, giving a half-nod, eyes still on the pages except when he looked up to locate the thing he was reading about. Frankenstein gave him this, so he'd eat the ramyeon. He didn't mind working at the school, protecting the kids M-24 wanted protected.


	2. Chapter 2

"Why do you have such a twisted noble aura around you?" the short one demanded.

That made M-21 bristle."Don't talk about my comrade like that."

"So it's another one of those who betrayed humanity, making false contracts… Or are you working with the traitors?!"

M-21 glared. "My comrade died protecting human children from the Union. You can say what you want about me, but I'm done being quiet while people insult him just because they have power and we can't fight back."

That got them staring at him. "Died?" the girl asked, speaking for the first time.

Putting his left hand on top of his right, M-21 looked down at them protectively. "Yeah. I'm the last of us, so he wanted to keep protecting me, even when I couldn't even be there with him." When he fought for his life and the kids' lives.

He didn't glance up at them. He knew what the will to protect and soul weapons meant to nobles, from Frankenstein's remarks. M-24 deserved to have their respect, even if M-21 felt like he was going to be in big trouble, running his mouth like this to strange powerful noblesse.

"The last of the traitors to humanity? You expect us to believe that?" the little one said.

M-21 bared his teeth at him now. "The last of our batch of the humans the Union kidnapped, mind-wiped and experimented on to get power for themselves until it killed us! They might have made him into some kind of fucked-up half-noblesse, but M-24 _never_ betrayed humanity! Keep talking shit like that, and we're going to have to _go somewhere else_."

M-24 was going to be so pissed at him if he ever found out about this, he thought. He couldn't do anything but grow those black claws on his own, a noblesse was going to take him apart. And then what happened to M-24? His fingers flexed, _wanting_ claws.

The two of them looked at each other. "We'll be watching you," the short one warned him.

"You'd better be watching your mouth so you don't keep blabbing your idiot assumptions about people everywhere," M-21 told him, smirking. Constant chatter got on Frankenstein's nerves, and his master was silent almost all the time, so he hoped he'd guessed right about that being a noblesse thing. "You talk too much," he added, in case what he said went over the kid's head.

A flash of anger in the kid's eyes, but the girl put her hand on his shoulder and shook her head no when he looked at her. "But Seira!"

"Could you sound any more like a kid?" M-21 asked, because he seemed to have lost the filter on his mouth that kept him alive at the Union, after days of trying to provoke the noblesse he lived with into doing _something_ so he'd know where the line was, or find out if they were just faking being nice to him and tolerant of him not submitting to them. "Children should be in class right now, you know," he told the kid, smirking into his irritated little face. "Do I need to haul you into the principal's office for being truant?"

"That will not be necessary," Seira said before the boy could open his mouth again. "Come, Regis."

Regis trotted along at her heels with one last glare back to M-21.

Damn. He'd wanted to hand these two over to the other noblesse. They could be his problem. Why were they here?

* * *

M-21 covered his 'oh shit' with a glare after he walked in the door. Why were they _here?_

Frankenstein looked like he was suppressing irritation, but he always did that when the kids were in his house with his master. Had he even noticed that there were two more noblesse in addition to the four human kids?

"Ajussi!" Shinwoo waved. "Come sit with us!"

The only open space was next to Regis.

"Why are you _here?"_ the noble hissed while the others were occupied in the kitchen watching Seira cook.

"I _live_ here. Why are _you_ here?"

"We also live here for now."

 _Fuck_. M-21 was afraid of that. It made sense that the noblesse would come to a school run by a noblesse, right?

"I'll be keeping an eye on you," Regis added, glaring at him suspiciously.

"Do what you want, just don't insult M-24 or I'll tell the principal on you." He had to be more powerful than a couple of kids when he dealt with Mary. At least his master had to be able to do something?

"You'd drag such an elegant human into your business?"

What? They thought the principal was human?

"A brat being disrespectful to a member of the staff _is_ his business."

Regis grimaced, forced to admit that was true.

"M, would you mind helping me with some of the chores?" he heard from the hallway.

M?

The kids picked up on it too. "M? Is that Ajussi's name or nickname?"

"Ajussi is fine," he said, not wanting the reminder that there wasn't much point in specifying the number when he was the last of the M-series. He got up, relieved to make his escape until he caught Regis' triumphant expression.

The kid was as good as saying 'that's right, you'd better run away.'

M-21 smirked. "I have to help out around the place. I'm not some freeloader." Like _you._

Regis jerked as if stung. "Of course I'll do my fair share! It would be inelegant not to!"

"Really?" Frankenstein said, sounding all too pleased. "Then you won't mind cleaning up after yourself and the rest of the kids when they've left, and doing the dishes after each meal."

Regis looked about to protest.

"Miss Seira has already volunteered to handle dinner for me on the nights I have to work late. Such a responsible young lady, Miss Seira." He smiled at the noblesse girl, who blushed slightly.

"Really?" Ikhan said.

"We'll get to taste Seira's cooking again?"

M-21 saw the twitch as Frankenstein realized he'd inadvertently invited his Master's hangers-on over for dinner more than just this once. "Miss Seira?"

She nodded, still with color on her cheeks.

"If Miss Seira doesn't mind, I don't see why not." Ignoring the cheers, Frankenstein looked at M-21. "Are you coming?"

"Right." He hurried.

Frankenstein led him not into the buried lab, but up onto the balcony.

"They think you're a weak human!" M-21 told him.

"A common mistake to make…"

"Your fangs are showing." So Frankenstein wasn't as perfect as passing for human as he thought.

He looked embarrassed for a moment, then changed the subject by getting back on it. "The Landegre – Regis – tried to mind control me into letting them stay here and attend Ye Ran, and I didn't want him to know it didn't work."

"Why are they even here, then?" If they didn't know they were staying with other noblesse.

"To investigate the incident with the infected. They must suspect one of their criminals is involved."

Instead it was a knock-off noble. "So any noblesse hanging out around here would be prime suspects."

Frankenstein frowned, nodded. "I won't have them suspecting such a thing of Master…"

"No chance of that." Wasn't it obvious that Frankenstein was the suspicious one here? "They know I'm modified," M-21 said, before Frankenstein could start going crazy. "And they sensed M-24. I told them that he was a ghost who wanted to protect me, and that we were used by the Union, not part of it. Are they going to accept that?"

"What humans do isn't their business, and even if they suspect M-24 is responsible for the mutant he's already in eternal sleep."

So maybe he could just tell them M-24 did it and they'd leave?

Even if it was the truth, he didn't want them thinking of M-24 as nothing but a common criminal. And traitor to humanity. He was sick of people looking down on them.

"Are you going to make me tell them?"

"Why would I do that?"

"So they hurry up and leave."

"It's up to you," Frankenstein told him. "I'm a 'weak human,' after all, and a 'weak human' wouldn't have anything to do with the affairs of pureblooded nobles and enhanced humans."

"So it's my problem and I shouldn't expect back-up from you?"

"I didn't say that," Frankenstein said, and M-21 stared at him. The noblesse smiled back. "Master wants you to be able to stay here as long as you like. If you were attacked or taken away against your will, whoever was responsible would be getting in the way of Master's wishes." And Frankenstein would end them.

* * *

M-21 couldn't let the kids die. When M-24 woke up, he'd be so disappointed in him… He was going to be even more disappointed if M-21 died. What would happen to them both then? They were the last of the M-series, and M-21 didn't remember anyone else he cared about enough for his soul to want to stay with them.

He floated there, barely aware of the floor he was bleeding on, the kids clustered near him, and… he could tell by the way M-24 felt that Frankenstein's Master was almost here. The kids would be safe. So… he'd done okay.

"M-21!" He heard. "M-21, wake up!"

That voice! His eyelids felt so heavy, but they still opened in that white space. "M-24!" He grabbed his arms, barely paying attention to Raizel standing behind him, watching.

He'd protected the kids and he'd gotten to see M-24 again. Even if he hadn't gotten the names, this was good.

* * *

He stood there, hands in his pockets, looking at Seira, waiting for her to look up from her tea. "You have a soul weapon, right?"

She nodded.

"Can I see it?"

Another nod. Putting her teacup down, she stood up and called it right there in the living room.

"I only managed to summon M-24 once and my head wasn't very clear," M-21 told her, because she'd done this for him, so he should maybe at least give her an explanation in thanks.

Although it looked as though she'd known that already.

"Can I touch it?" he asked her.

She held the shaft out to him, carefully.

M-24 could sense the power humming within the shaft when M-21 touched it. It felt dry and cool, but alive. Slow. It felt slow, the way enhanced humans had slower heartbeats than humans most of the time. He was sure it would speed up if Seira need it, when she was family. "How do you summon it?" he asked.

"There is a formal address for each of the noble soul weapons, but it doesn't have to be used, it's just more elegant. He already hears you," Regis said.

How would you know that, M-21 wanted to know, but Regis was the noble.

"I could sense noble power from you when you were protecting our classmates," Regis explained.

"I'm just too weak to summon him." M-21 grimaced, then looked up as Seira shook her head.

"He is not as powerful as Death Scythe. Summoning him should not take that much more strength than summoning clothing."

"Which I can't do either."

Seira's brow creased as she realized M-21 was right.

"Those bastards might have messed with me, but I _am_ a human. I'm going to have to replace my uniform."

"We have plenty of suits in your size," Frankenstein said from the kitchen where he was standing over the coffee machine. "I make Master's clothing myself, and I made uniforms for you as practice pieces. I can't give Master anything that hasn't been perfected, of course."

"Right," M-21 said, under his breath. That sounded like him. "I've been eating," the experimental ramyeon, he started to say, but better not mention experiments in front of Tao and Takeo when they were still skittish and might leave. "What else should I do? I want to hurry up and summon M-24."

"Meditation exercises should help," Frankenstein said, finally taking the cup of milk and coffee to his Master, who nodded as Frankenstein started to stir in sugars. "If you practice expanding your connection to M-24's soul, you might be able to wake him enough for him to help you brainstorm. Many soul weapons more or less summon themselves once they're woken, it's maintaining them that can be difficult."

Yeah, well, M-24 wasn't strong enough to summon himself, not being a real noble much less a pureblood or whatever, and M-21 was the only one in a position to get stronger.

Frankenstein bowed to Raizel. "Master, I'm going to write up a meditation guide for M-21."

Raizel nodded and sipped his pale coffee.

Somehow, M-21 ended up being the one in charge of giving Tao and Takeo their check-up while Frankenstein went into the ramyeon room, probably to get the food started. Tao chattered and M-21 ended up telling him some of how to work the machines, until he just went and took the guide out of a drawer for them.

While they were reading it, he went and knocked on the side room's door.

"Yes?" Frankenstein called from inside.

"There's something weird in their cells."

"Do they still have any of that D drug?"

"Right." M-21 felt like an idiot for not taking a look at that first thing. He'd heard them talking about how they found out they were disposable, just like the M-series.

When Frankenstein came back out the door (it slid shut quickly behind him, faster than normal, and M-21 knew why he'd rigged it that way), M-21 told him, "It's a slow poison."

Frankenstein nodded, looking as though he'd expected as much from the Union. "If you saved their data, and if they're willing to let me look at it, I can come up with a replacement for the D so they don't need to take it if they find themselves in a desperate situation. As for getting it out of their cells – provided it's fat-soluble?" If it was water-soluble it shouldn't have built up like that. When M-21 nodded, Frankenstein did the same. "Something like the experiment you're participating in would help."

"You're being experimented on?" Tao asked.

M-21 shrugged. "It's fine. I live here, and it's for M-24's sake."

"I'm volunteering," Takeo said, stepping forward, a resolved expression on his face.

"You really don't have to," M-21 said. Did they even like ramyeon? But if eating fatty foods would help them recover from the D, then M-21 had to go along with Frankenstein's joke.

"No, you're the reason we can stay here, and you showed us around." How to use the equipment, so they didn't have to let a scientist study them any more than necessary. "I'll join in with M-21 too!" Tao said.

"Wonderful," Frankenstein said, looking slightly evil. "Having more subjects will help me get better data… Follow me."

Takeo and Tao both hurried a little, to get there before M-21. They froze when they saw the steaming bowls of ramyeon. M-21 looked away, trying not to laugh, as Frankenstein turned on the recorder and discussed green onions and garlic with fiendish anticipation.


	3. Chapter 3

It was kind of a good thing that Frankenstein disappeared for awhile, because that let the three of them poke around in the lab without feeling like they were being Observed by a Scientist. Regis came down to see if they were making a mess that needed cleaning and kept being invited to come down with them because there was something nice about his 'what the fuck' and 'ewwww' expressions when they told him about how Union labs worked.

After the first night they missed the ramyeon experiments, M-21 asked Seira if she could help him figure out how to set the ramyeon-making contraption and the cookie machine up because he and Tao didn't know much about good food, and even Raizel came down sometimes once Tao set up a picnic table because this was where the cookies were.

He also said, "Frankenstein has always valued his things. Even I am very careful in that regard," and then frowned worriedly whenever they made a mess and didn't spot it or came close to messing with the equipment in a way Frankenstein wouldn't be happy about, so having him there let M-21 feel reasonably sure Frankenstein wouldn't kill them all when he got back.

Eventually Takeo asked, "Is it normal for him to be gone so long?" and they all saw Rai take his cell phone and write a text while he was waiting for his current bowl of ramyeon (when he'd seen all that ramyeon he'd wanted to be part of the experiment, and they weren't going to say no when that was insurance against Frankenstein doing something nasty to them with it).

A couple of minutes after that, M-21 froze when M-24 jerked nearly awake in his head. It felt like they'd just heard a gunshot or a couple of enhanced humans going at it nearby.

"Frankenstein concerns me," Raizel said, and sighed after they all turned to look at him. "I hope he does not want to go back to his old ways."

Regis especially looked at him curiously, but Raizel sipped his tea, too elegant to talk about people behind their backs any more than that.

"So he's having a mid-life crisis or something?" M-21 asked, remembering teacher's lounge gossip.

The nobles and Takeo were all looking at him now, so he was glad when Tao turned out to know all about it and started filling up the silence.

* * *

"Master, what are you doing down here?" Frankenstein asked when he came home fifteen minutes later. He and Raizel both looked down at the bowl of ramyeon in front of Rai on the picnic table. The answer was obvious.

"Frankenstein… did you really have to take _that_ out?" Raizel asked him.

Blue eyes avoided his master's. "Well, not to defeat either of them, but Dr. Aris had a nanite battle suit of a type I'd never seen before, and I wanted to interrogate her about what she'd done to the children and the matter of Takeo's sister…"

"You were noisy. M-24 was frightened."

Frankenstein winced. "Forgive me, Master, M-24." He bowed slightly in M-21's direction as well as his master's.

"You fought Dr. Aris?" Takeo asked, wide-eyed.

"I thought scientists were supposed to be weak," M-21 complained. First Crombel, now Dr. Aris.

"Her, another modified human named Yuri who kidnapped me off the street…" someone would have made a comment about how ridiculous _that_ was, but then Frankenstein's expression darkened, "and two humans turned into machines without wills of their own, forced to use up their life force fighting for the scum who _did that to them…_ "

M-21 didn't need M-24's spike of alarm to jump back from the darkness that appeared around the noble scientist. It was darker than the stuff that tore strips off his arms and kept them from healing for so long.

"Frankenstein…" Raizel frowned worriedly at him. "You will have nightmares."

He coughed and suppressed that dark energy, although it took M-24 a minute to calm back down even after that.

Regis looked all confused, but by what part of all that?

"I do not want you to go back to your old ways," Raizel told him. "In this place, you are surrounded by children, and you smile all the time."

"Master…" Frankenstein looked weird for a few seconds, eyes wide and trembling a little, something a little like being ashamed and vulnerable but not quite? Like he was happy about it, that his Master gave a damn about how Frankenstein felt about the children coming and infesting his neat house and leaving crumbs everywhere? But why was he looking upset _and_ smiley? M-21 did not get them at all.

"Ramyeon," Raizel said next.

"Yes, Master," Frankenstein replied quickly, pulling himself together. "You said in your text." He frowned at the bowl in front of Raizel. "Is it not to your liking, Master?"

"Ramyeon, Frankenstein." Raizel looked meaningfully at the door to the room with the conveyer belt. "We are having ramyeon now. You have missed family dinners."

So they ended up having a picnic in the lab, with Frankenstein, Raizel and Seira at the table and the rest of them sitting on a console chair (Tao had thought of it first, of course) , a scanning bed or the floor.

M-21 glanced at all of them covertly, but not to get an idea of how likely they were to attack. He wanted to tell M-24 about this later.

* * *

M-24 had reacted a little when Regis and Seira showed up. He did the same with Gejutel, a disquieted impulse from him pulling M-21 to the school gate.

"So, you're one of the ones the children have mistaken for nobles." The old man glared down at him, and M-21 was glaring back when Seira and Regis appeared and went down on one knee to greet the clan leader.

A clan leader? Like Seira? Did that mean he had a soul weapon? Seira hadn't had hers for very long (a century wasn't very long to nobles) and an old guy might know more… Tao and Takeo quickly showed up as Seira explained that M-21 and the others had put themselves in danger to protect innocent humans and weren't traitors to humanity like the Union.

"Regis, is this true?"

"Yes, clan leader."

The whole thing ended with Regis and Seira just leaving in the middle of the school day to take Regis' grandpa back to the house. M-21 tagged along: he wanted to learn more about nobles, for M-24's sake. Tao and Takeo came too, risking getting in trouble with the Boss by leaving their posts to watch the others' backs?

"You," the old noble said when he saw Frankenstein, and got all disapproving.

Frankenstein didn't even look angry though, maybe because it was just that ridiculous, someone thinking that he'd give up on looking for his Master. He was really loyal to him – and M-21 could understand being willing to die for someone else.

Gejutel's smile of happy relief when he greeted, "Cadis Etrama di Raizel, the True Noblesse," was a good sign that there wasn't going to be a fight, but then Frankenstein basically told the kids to go play while the adults talked.

* * *

They all looked at each other. "So you don't know what True Noblesse means either?" M-21 guessed, otherwise Seira would have said something.

She shook her head.

M-21 told them that, "Frankenstein said that there was only one existence that had the title of Noblesse." Or something like that.

"So I guess noblesse is the same as noble as much as vampire is the same as noble?" Tao thought aloud.

"Or as little? …That would mean Sir Raizel isn't a noble," Takeo pointed out.

"His elegance _is_ exceptional," Regis said, somewhere between doubting that someone so elegant might not be a noble and starry-eyed at the reminder.

"Did the old guy ever talk about Frankenstein?" M-21 asked, because the guy was pretty memorable.

"The clan leader," Regis corrected him, rolling his eyes a bit at M-21's expected uncouth behavior. "Perhaps to my parent, but…"

" _Seira's_ a clan leader," M-21 said. "I'm not giving some guy I don't know more respect than I give her just because he has more memories and has more power than me. I had enough of _that_ at the Union."

"M-21 is the last of the M-series," Seira told Regis. "His behavior reflects on all of the only clan he remembers."

That put M-21 in the same position as Seira, he realized, and he saw the same realization in Regis' eyes. Unfortunately, it didn't make Regis back down or apologize, but look at M-21 up and down with alarm in his eyes.

"What's up?" Tao asked him.

"You need to do something about your elegance!" Regis looked insistent. "You might be far more elegant than the ones who kidnapped Ikhan and the others," he said, wrinkling his nose in disgust, "but you can't let anyone look down on you, for the sake of your comrades!"

M-21 smirked, more at himself than Regis really. "The only thing the Union respects is power." They'd keep looking down on him as long as he was weak.

"I can't help you gain power, but I _can_ help you be more elegant. Although someone – the houseowner? – has already done a lot." Regis nodded, impressed by their hosts again. Then he paused, realizing something, and peering at M-21 in slight alarm.

"You have not yet reached your age of majority."

Regis looked a little relieved at Seira's words, but then he looked at M-21 again and made a bit of an unhappy face, nose wrinkling. He looked like he was about to go, 'But…' just like a kid, but had too much noble elegance.

* * *

At dinner, Seira told the old man – Gejutel – about how Regis let himself get captured and beaten up by DA-5 because they took humans hostage, which turned out to be how most of Regis' family got killed. The old man still looked pleased as anything.

Nobles.

She also mentioned how M-21 had let them capture him because of his oath to the comrades who suffered alongside him, how Takeo had begged the houseowner for the lives of human children (after the houseowner kicked his ass, which had Gejutel accusing Frankenstein of still being too rough on children) and Tao refused an order to die after Ikhan called him Big Brother and wanted him to live. Had Regis told her all this?

"What about you, Miss Seira?" Tao asked. "You beat Hammer!"

All the nobles at the table paused and then ignored what Tao just said. That made Tao cock his head to the side, making a note of it. M-21 noticed that he was very good at hiding the flicker of nervousness when he might have offended the powerful. Yeah, M-21'd had to get good at that, too.

"I only did what was expected of me," Seira replied before Tao could get too worried. "As Regis' chaperone."

"While Regis upheld the ideals of the Landegre," Gejutel chimed in, with a proud look at his grandson. "And the three of you were able to throw off what I'm told is rather like mind control in order to act with honor."

"Mind control leaves the facilities suppressed, but intact. The Union inflicts deliberate brain damage to erase the moral instruction their test subjects received as humans, and then keep them too stupid to realize that what the Union tells them to do is not the proper way to behave." Frankenstein frowned, looking at the three of them. Or maybe past them. M-21 knew when someone was analyzing him as a specimen instead of a person, but it still felt different somehow. "M-21's modifications included a regeneration factor; Takeo incorporates some bird genes to improve his eyes and visual cortex, and birds rewire their brains on a regular basis; and Tao was intended to manage and connect systems, and therefore it wasn't hard for him to figure out that good faith cooperation is a massive force multiplier. As for M-21's comrade, M-24," he nodded at M-21, "he's noble-based, and like M-21 was more powerful than the Union expected and managed to hide it from them. I believe he used his developing power to reach out to his comrades while they were all kept suspended in tubes, and that made him aware of the validity of other people before the Union started bothering to instruct disposable test subjects in sociopathy."

M-21 blinked. He'd told Frankenstein and his Master as much as he could about M-24, sitting in the living room with tea, because Frankenstein suggested that saying it aloud might help keep M-24's memory alive in his mind and make it easier to connect with him, but Frankenstein had just listened, not said anything like that.

Of course, that was after they already had the noble kids in the house, and then M-21 went off with DA-5, so Frankenstein might just have been taking time to think it over.

"I felt that we all knew each other," M-21 said, "but that was because we could all see each other in tubes, being treated the same way."

A nod. "That would create a difference between each other and the scientists, and let you learn that not everyone in the world was like them, but according to Tao and Takeo numbered series don't survive as many years of experimentation as you did – and that hack Crombel obviously didn't have the sense to keep you alive for long-term trials. Without touch and social interaction, human bodies start breaking down in a way the Union's excuse for a healing factor can't do much about. However, humans lived with nobles during prehistory, and mental contact with a noble is so beneficial to the brain and nervous system that even someone _imagining_ that they have a mental link to a noble has a statistically significant effect on their lifespans and ability to recover from disease and injury – that's why religion is so popular even millennia after humans stopped living together with their 'gods.' M-24 might have helped you stay alive long enough that the Union let you out of the tubes in order to figure out _why_ you still lived."

That got the two younger nobles staring at him, Regis more openly. Frankenstein's master kept waiting for his ramyeon noodles to get bigger. Gejutel nodded, sipping at his tea. "Humans need to sleep and be calm in order to heal," he told the children. "They knew that nobles could sense threats further away than they could, and that we _could_ heal them if it was something them couldn't do themselves. Thanks to that, they could fix up the bumps and bruises from training easily enough if they fell asleep somewhere they could see me. That let me save my power for training and the ones with injuries they couldn't take care of on their own."

M-21'd known that the other M-series cared about him. That they were watching over him, that they wanted him to be okay even if there was nothing else they could do but watch and care what happened to him.

That… it made so much difference. So much.

How could he not be willing to die for them, how could he not care for them, when he was alive only because they hadn't wanted him to die?

He'd _known_ all of them by the time they were let out of the tubes. They hadn't even needed to speak. M-21 hadn't known enough to think there was anything odd about it the time. Maybe they should have wondered after meeting Union agents from other experiments, but by that point they had learned that the world was divided into two groups: the M-series and sadistic Union bastards. They had long given up on asking why the bastards were bastards and hoping there was some way to make them stop.

Maybe that was part of why he'd put the kids in danger. Because they were not-M-series, but then… they tried to protect each other… and Takeo asked a scientist, not that he'd known Frankenstein was a scientist, just a person with power, to spare the kids, and Tao defied orders for Ikhan.

And maybe he and M-24 weren't alone.

He closed his eyes and paid attention to M-24 and the rest of the room at the same time, or tried to. He'd known that M-24 could sense them, the nobles especially, but he hadn't realized that… Yes, if he pushed up against M-24 a little, he could realize that he sort of already was feeling M-24's impression of them, by feeling it get stronger.

Tao and Takeo were _like us_ , and M-21 agreed, he hadn't wanted to let them run off and get killed.

He wondered if this was how M-24 felt about him.

Rai, Frankenstein, Seira, Regis, now Gejutel… He took a bit to poke at each of them while Frankenstein said something about the natural human healing factor, spontaneous remission and fight/flight/freeze/…communicate. Then he tried alternating between them and Tao and Takeo.

It took a moment to tell the difference – not in power, _that_ was unmistakable. But all his senses of them were telling him that he wanted to get them to stay together. It was just that in the case of the nobles, he wanted them to stay here, with M-21, because _he_ was safer that way, and with Tao and Takeo he wanted them to stay here because _they_ were safer that way, here where M-21 could protect them.

Regis was a little different from the rest of the nobles, somewhere in between 'stay close to this guy' and 'keep him close by us,' probably because he was younger and M-24 was all their big brother.

M-21 hoped he could wake M-24 up in time to meet Seira. She was a Big Sister like he was a Big Brother, he could picture M-24 smiling at her, grateful she'd come by because M-24 couldn't help worrying about him in a house with a lab…

Oh. That was why it felt like Seira was looking after a bunch of people, not just Regis. He'd known she had a soul weapon and that was something like M-24, but he could feel it now that he was looking. It was kind of hard to tell where she ended and they began, when they were all just as serene as Seira. Sleeping around her the way the M-series slept in a pile, so that they'd know if one of them was taken away in the night. Except a soul weapon could help fight back, could actually protect the noble who had them. They all blended into each other, just like a tangle of sleeping limbs.

The old guy Gejutel's were easier: there were only two of them, and despite the fact they were asleep they didn't feel tired the way Gejutel did.

Feeling like he and M-24 were doing it together, he looked a little closer, and jerked, suppressing the impulse to send the table flying and get into a defensive crouch when they realized that one of them was looking back at them.

He forced himself not to shake when he saw Gejutel looking at him, telling himself that of course he was, everyone was after he made a spectacle of himself like that. "I realized that I could kind of feel what M-24 senses, so…"

"Oh," the old man said, chuckling. "Regasus?"

"Regasus?"

"The name of the Landegre clan's soul weapon," the old man explained. Then he frowned, concerned. "Young man, you shouldn't go around poking at soul weapons. Not under the same roof as Frankenstein," he said, glaring briefly at the other noble.

"Dark Spear is sealed by my Master's order."

"Hmm." Gejutel nodded. "I should have known you wouldn't allow him to come to harm under your Master's roof."


	4. Chapter 4

Gejutel appeared at the school gate, waiting outside politely this time. "I am here to offer you contracts," he told them.

"Isn't that illegal?" M-21 gave him a look, hands in his pockets.

"It is the duty of the nobles to protect others against enemies they cannot fight on their own." The way they couldn't do much if the Union found them. "I would also prefer to spare Cadis Etrama di Raizel the burden of more contracts, and keep Frankenstein from having to go back to his old ways to save your lives. Through a contract, you would gain the power to control your own bodies."

Taking back… even undoing what the Union took from them?

"It would also improve your ability to speak with your comrade," he told M-21.

That made M-21 have to consider for a second, but, "Sorry, but I don't know you." Frankenstein and Raizel letting him under their roof didn't mean much when they let M-21 live with them after he attacked the kids. "And I don't just have myself to think about." When a contract could enslave people, M-21'd be putting M-24 as well as himself at risk of being used. "I'll help M-24 on my own."

Instead of being offended, the old man gave him a slow, approving nod. It was probably elegant to turn down power for the sake of a comrade.

"Getting to turn down power is pretty nice, you know?" Tao said.

Takeo nodded, smiling to himself.

* * *

When the new noble that looked a bit like a gangly Frankenstein with short hair called them Human Toys, M-21 had to admit that was accurate. At least it used to be, that was what they all were to the Union. Now they weren't human, not that he was complaining when it was the only reason M-24 was still with him, and weren't its toys anymore, but how was a noble supposed to know that, when the only enhanced humans were supposed to be Union, _or else_?

That didn't keep him from having to hide a smirk when Seira backhanded Rael into the sky and then had to use the tip of her scythe to grab his clothing before he crashed into the school's playing field. M-21's life (mostly blank) had flashed before his eyes when he saw where the noble brat was heading and realized how Frankenstein would react when he saw the crater.

As the noble's mouth opened and closed in shock, Seira looked down at him as though she'd rather not be touching him even with a much longer pole, and shook him off her scythe fastidiously. "Rael Kertia, these humans were kidnapped by the human organization and had their very humanity stripped from them. It is my duty as a Loyard to protect them."

"These…"

Seira glared at him, eyes glowing.

"Of course, Seira. I didn't mean to imply you'd associate with… these without a reason."

Her face calmed again and she nodded. That was (slightly) more like it. "Why have you disgraced the Kertia by coming here?"

Was M-21 hearing things, or was there a little pause before she added 'by coming here?' Was she implying that this guy disgraced the Kertia (clan, probably) just by existing?

"To bring you back to Lukedonia with me."

She gave him a flat look. Really? "I am in the human world escorting Regis, who is about to undergo the Ceremony of Adulthood."

Rael opened his mouth, shut it as his eyes opened wide when he sensed Seira's aura of menace, and quickly pulled some kind of scroll out of empty air and unfurled it. Instantly Seira and Regis dropped to one knee.

After reading it, Seira nodded and stood.

"I am not to return with her?" Regis looked a little worried as well as confused. It didn't make sense to leave a kid alone in the human world without an adult to make sure the Union didn't get them.

"Do not question the Lord, Regis."

"So you see, Seira, I'm here to escort you to Lukedonia."

"You are not mentioned in the Lord's orders. Rael Kertia, are you putting your words in the Lord's mouth?"

M-21 couldn't help smirking again at the 'Oh _shit'_ look on the noble's face.

Seira stared Rael down for a bit, letting that sink in. "Rajak Kertia must have sent you to chaperone Regis in my absence."

That implied that the brat was staying _here?_ M-21 stiffened.

Turning around, Seira caught his eye. "I must return to Lukedonia immediately. Would you ask the Chairman to instruct Rael in the proper courtesies he should follow while he stays here?"

Wow.

How badly had this guy pissed Seira off, for her to ask _Frankenstein_ to _teach him some manners?_

* * *

Somehow Frankenstein kept knowing _just_ the right thing to say to keep Rael pissed off but not actually attacking until they reached a deserted island. The promise of a place where Rael could beat up the uppity 'human' without getting humans killed and pissing off his brother, or committing massive property damage and pissing off Seira, probably had something to do with it. Then Rael got a look at Rai, who insisted on coming on the helicopter, and was stunned into silence until Regis started making fun of him for what was actually the normal reaction to Rai when he wasn't messing with people's heads so they didn't notice him, and Frankenstein had to get sharp with Regis and threaten him with not getting to come along and see the show.

Tao had somehow managed to get blankets and other picnic supplies onto the helicopter and was pouring Raizel tea when Frankenstein led Rael off a ways until they were at a safe distance from the spectators.

Raizel was so powerful you couldn't _not_ be nervous around him unless you were a noble or something, but hanging out in the lab made Tao figure out that he was happy as long as you kept the tea and snacks coming, so instead of avoiding Raizel he'd channeled his nervousness into trying to become the noble's second favorite person after Frankenstein.

M-21 was just planning to enjoy the arrogant brat who called him a human toy getting his face kicked in, but then Frankenstein told Rael to take out his soul weapon and M-21 didn't care about Rael anymore, just learning everything he could.

Grandia wasn't hard to figure out, when it was glaring power all over the place. Only one soul in there, and dead to the world compared to Death Scythe and Regasus. Maybe not joining the main soul weapon had taken a lot out of him?

Dark Spear was not asleep. Not asleep at all. They were awake and they were _pissed_ and he couldn't even tell how many were in there, they were so faint compared to the souls in other soul weapons and _they could see him_.

" _We're getting the fuck out of here,"_ he heard in his head, not sure if it was M-24's thought or his or _both_ , but even though he'd stiffened he didn't stand up, because for one like hell he'd run away when this was for M-24, and for another M-24 started out human and this was a _human_ soul weapon, he was pretty sure, so _he needed to see this_.

He even grimaced when the fight was over and Frankenstein hauled Rael back into the helicopter for the flight home.

And only part of it was because Frankenstein was coming towards them, still carrying that thing even if he'd hidden it somehow, and _why the hell did he have something like that?_

He was almost glad that Frankenstein announced he needed to take the injured Rael back to Lukedonia and that meant he would have to take Regis too, since that would leave the boy without proper noble supervision because Master was coming as well. That meant M-21 had some time before he had to ask him and risk ending up part of that thing.

"M-21, before we leave the island might be a good time for you to try summoning M-24."

'Why would being here make a difference?' M-21 almost asked, and then realized that of course Frankenstein was worried about it making a mess. So, "How?" he wondered.

"I'll attack you, and by this point you and your comrade should be stabilized enough that he should be able to wake up with your life at stake," Frankenstein said, with _that_ smile.

There were more 'should be's in there than M-21 would have wanted, but, "Let's go," he said, nodding towards the open area where Frankenstein fought Rael. It was already covered in craters, one more wouldn't matter. He didn't want to wait anymore, he wanted to talk to M-24, even if the feelings he got sometimes now were more than he'd ever thought he'd have again, when M-24 was buried in that wall.

Now Frankenstein looked pleased, which was even more worrying. This was going to hurt, M-21 knew, but he braced himself for an attack.

His new enhanced hearing caught Tao asking Raizel, "M-21 will be okay, right?"

He couldn't hear Raizel's response, not over the crackling as Frankenstein reached up into the sky. "Answer my call," the noblesse said, smile turning fanged.

Ohshitohshitohshit. M-21 felt panic shoot through him but he stood his ground. This was his chance to talk to M-24 again, but M-24 was already a soul weapon, was that like half-digested the way Dark Spear saw things? He couldn't let them get their hands on M-24!

Frozen, he wanted to ask Frankenstein to stop, but he knew a scientist would _never_ stop, would risk M-24 to see what happened, and even though he knew Frankenstein better than that the terror he felt now was too much like the labs.

"Dark Spear."

He couldn't move, he couldn't speak, just, " _M-24!"_ Run away, he wanted to yell. M-21 was frozen, but M-24!

Frankenstein charged slowly, so slowly, and he _couldn't let that thing hit him,_ it would try to take M-24! Desperately his hands reached out to catch it between them, even knowing that it would try to eat _him_ …

And a crash of iron as gauntlets clanged together in front of him, crushing the dark energy between them, and Dark Spear fizzled out, Frankenstein dismissing it quicker than it had come.

M-21 collapsed to his hands and knees and took deep, heaving breaths, eyes still wild with panic.

" _M-21, are you okay?"_

That voice was so familiar. So, so familiar.

" _You're the one who touched that thing!"_ Was M-24 ok, that was what was important!

A tiny pause before, _"I'm fine."_ A lie, because to M-24 it was M-21 who mattered. " _What happened?"_ M-24 had told M-21 to go with them because he'd be _safe_ , had they turned on him?

" _Frankenstein offered to attack me so I could summon you, I agreed to it,"_ M-21 said, going to wipe the sweat off his face with his forearm and feeling the cool metal. He rested his forehead against it and shook, only half with relief that he'd survived. And he and M-24 had thought they could fight these guys!

" _M-21…"_ M-24 growled, about to scold him for putting himself in danger.

" _It worked,"_ and that was what mattered. " _I can talk to you."_ He lowered the gauntlet and looked up. "I can talk to him."

"Good," Frankenstein said, dusting his hands off. "You were growing stronger so quickly that if I waited until we returned from Lukedonia to do this, I might have had to resort to drastic measures."

M-21 gulped and he felt M-24's fear of what might have happened if M-21 hadn't agreed to this now. If _that thing_ wasn't drastic, what was?!

"You'll only be able to stay manifested for so long," Frankenstein said, addressing the gauntlets. "But you might be able to stay awake even with the soul weapon dismissed. Even if you do go back to sleep, I think M-21 should be able to take care of it from here."

Yeah, with the mental exercises and trying to be more stubborn (that was really what it amounted to, which explained Regis). M-21 nodded, getting up. He only swayed a little on his feet.

"You can talk to your comrade again?" Tao asked, running over to them.

"That's wonderful, M-21." Takeo smiled.

"Hi, I'm Tao and…" Tao blinked as the gauntlets disappeared.

 _Now_ M-21 nearly fell over, and felt Frankenstein prop him up with a hand on his arm until he steadied.

* * *

M-21 was reading through the advice Frankenstein left on how the three of them might want to stabilize themselves – he was still being hands-off, making sure M-21 and Tao knew how to use the equipment and teaching them enough that he could hint at potential courses of action instead of telling them what to do and making them nervous he was tricking them into experimenting on themselves when Tao had the brilliant idea of going with Regis, the Boss and _him_ to the land of the nobles.

"I can't go with you," M-21 said, grimacing partially because he felt a bit of relief and didn't like it. "Nobles can feel each other and M-24's enough like a noble I can't hide him. There's no way they'd miss us on the plane."

"That's okay, M-21! If you stay and watch the school, then Boss won't get mad at us for abandoning our posts."

M-21 looked around the lab, frowning. "The Union would love to get its hands on this place, too." Use it to experiment on more people like the M-series.

"We'll make sure Regis comes back safe," Takeo told him, and M-21 felt himself relax a bit.

"Look after Ikhan for me!" Tao chimed in.

" _Yeah, those kids have been dragged into this too many times,"_ M-24 agreed.

* * *

"What the fuck is RK-04?" M-21 wanted to know, leaning away from the arm Tao had thrown around his shoulder.

"You are!" Tao grinned. "You would have been RK-03, but Regis joined while we were in Lukedonia."

Aargh, there was no way Tao had missed the slight slump of his shoulders when M-21 realized that the others had become part of something without him.

"It's okay, RK-04! I made you a mask and everything." Tao held it out to him. "When you can summon your gauntlets, let me measure them and I'll make something for RK-05."

M-21 took it gingerly, a bit mollified but, "I'm part of the M-series, not some RK."

"It means Raizel's Knights!"

What the… "Is that a thing?" Couldn't be, there was no way the number four slot would still be open if it was, knowing how nobles reacted to Raizel's elegance.

"I founded it!"

M-21 looked at Takeo and Regis.

"It was to protect Sir Raizel, I couldn't refuse," Regis said, clearly divided between feeling ashamed over how he'd clearly been roped into one of Tao's schemes and wanting to stand tall (as tall as he could get) because he'd done it to protect someone and it was a Landegre that did it and that made it the _definition_ of elegance and anyone who didn't acknowledge that truth could go fuck themselves.

"He needed protecting?" How strong even was he compared to other nobles? "What about Frankenstein?"

"Oh yeah!" Tao realized. "According to Miss Seira, Boss is a human!"

M-21 stared at him.

What the hell had he missed?!

* * *

"Yes?" Frankenstein blinked at them innocently. "Did I ever say that I wasn't?"

M-21 just glared at him, because seriously, cut the crap.

"Yes, I am an enhanced human. I enhanced myself around a thousand years ago. This and that happened… and then I came to live with Master in Lukedonia."

Takeo looked stunned that a human could become so powerful, but M-21 wasn't really because it might be impossible for 'a human,' but this was _Frankenstein_.

* * *

 _In this verse, being more comfortable with the parents than in canon means that M-21 is in the same kind of in-between position in the household as Seira in Regis, Tao and Takeo's eyes. For one thing he has a soul weapon like Seira, which makes him to-be-respected in Regis' eyes because until Rael, soul weapon equaled clan leader. For another, M-21 was hacking Union computers before he joined the household, and when Tao and Takeo came in M-21 already knew his way around the lab. So he's not on the same level as Boss and_ him _, but like Seira he's stronger and knows more about things (like the parents, mainly) than the 'kids.' So he's in a big brother position and has been acting like it by acting like M-24 a bit._

 _That's why Tao ran the plan by him, and kind of defaulted to 'when the parents are going to be away, M-21's in charge.' He actually expected M-21 to remain behind to look after the place instead of coming with them, because the Union getting its hands on that lab/their home would be bad._


	5. Chapter 5

"Can he hear us?" Tao asked.

M-21 nodded.

Takeo bowed. "It's good to meet you, M-24. We're glad you're awake. It must mean a lot to M-21."

"Ahjussi's been a big brother to us," Tao said, "and he said you were like a big brother to him, so now we've got two big brothers, right?" He threw his head back and laughed.

M-24 was a little amazed, two agents on an assassin squad wanting a for-disposal for a comrade, but they were meant to be disposed of too, and M-21 had looked after them. " _M-21, what do you think about them being part of the M-series?"_ When they were already comrades.

" _I want to find their names, anyway."_

From M-21, that was definite agreement.

* * *

"So, RK-05, I have this mask ready for now –" Tao held one up that was half-black and half white, "M-21 can switch masks when he summons you. I want to measure your gauntlets to make something like a sash, or a bracelet."

M-24 laughed, and felt M-21 smile. It was good to feel that. His comrade should have gotten a lot more chances to smile.

"M-24 doesn't mind, so get started on that now." M-21 held out his hands, flexing his fingers in the gauntlets. "I don't know how long I can keep these out."

Or how long until he could summon them again. " _You're getting a lot stronger, M-21."_

" _That heart's adapting, so I'm going to summon you as much as I can."_ As though M-21 wouldn't have done that anyway. " _That way, I should get used to having you out, and start recovering faster. I heal really fast now."_

" _That's a relief."_ All those times agents beat up M-21, because why not, he'd been so worried for him. Even with those strong people, M-21 was still getting in fights, but M-24 couldn't imagine having a peaceful life, like the normal people they'd watched and laughed at, pretending they didn't envy them their blissful ignorance. The Union wouldn't leave them alone ever, not when they dared to be alive. Not when M-21 was so strong.

" _I'm going to get stronger,"_ M-21 said. " _Even if it means enhancing myself. I won't let them look down on us ever again."_

" _M-21…"_ Did his comrade think that M-24 would reject him over that? Be disgusted that M-21 would experiment on himself, like he was one of _them_ , the scientists? " _I like the sound of that,"_ was what he said. " _If I never have to hear them call our comrades trash ever again…"_

" _I won't let them,"_ M-21 promised. "They won't get away with it," he said aloud. "The Union. They won't get away with it. Any of it."

Tao and Takeo stared at him while the two noblesse – right, nobles – Regis and Seira nodded, as good as saying, "Damn straight."

* * *

"Get out of that car," M-21 told the KSA agent, eyes narrow.

They went with them, but kept pretending they hadn't done anything wrong. "Cut the crap," M-21 said, arms folded.

M-24 wasn't happy either, not with these two endangering the kids. "You think we're just going to let you put the kids in danger?"

* * *

"And with his temper M-21 provoked them, I'm sure." Frankenstein said, putting his fingers together and plotting.

M-21 nodded. Damn right he had.

"So now I have an excuse to kick them off my campus. Good job, M-21," the boss said, and cackled.

* * *

"Don't you know you're not allowed here?" M-21 asked the KSA agent. Her ski mask wasn't fooling anybody, not when M-24 knew what she felt like and M-21 could smell her. A normal human might not know who she was, and M-21 didn't want to give anything away.

He caught her punch easily. "Is that all you got?" he taunted, smirking.

" _M-21… what if it is all she's got?"_

Instantly M-21's smile vanished and he released her fist. If this was all the power she had, that meant she was to-be-disposed-of, like the surviving M-series.

Her next punch had a little more behind it, but still. A little above the cannon fodder that served as extra security at medium-importance bases, but not enough to make an assassin team and have some back-up, even if there was another one of them up there fighting Takeo.

"You're with the Union?" she demanded when he brushed off her second blow too.

"You're _not_?" His face paled. "You mean you guys were looking for test subjects for the _KSA,_ not on behalf of the Union? Do you know what the Union _does_ to other organizations that have the guts to enhance people, and you were going to drag the kids into that?"

M-24 let him feel the alarm that sounded through her when she heard that he knew about the KSA and could get her and her comrade in trouble. That thought was enough to make him say, "I'm not with the Union either," even if he was still pissed she'd nearly gotten the kids in trouble.

"What do you mean? An enhanced human on your level, and you're telling me you're not with the Union?" she demanded.

"An enhanced human on _your_ level?" He snorted. "If you are with the Union and you want to get out, we can probably set you up with a safehouse or something," he said begrudgingly. Frankenstein was willing to do it for M-21 and M-24 when they'd put the kids in danger, and the KSA hadn't _really_ been intending to hurt them, not like the infected would have.

"What are you doing at a school? If you're telling the truth, they're in danger just from you being here."

"You don't get to say that when you're the one who wanted to recruit them into the KSA and take away their normal lives," he said, growling.

" _M-21…"_ He felt M-24's hand on his shoulder and it let him calm down a little as the agent on the rooftop dropped down next to Yonsu and Takeo followed at the same time as Tao landed, surrounding the KSA.

"Safehouses?" Sangeen asked. "People have left the Union?"

"I'm not telling you shit the Union might get out of you," he said with a smirk.

"Whoa, hold on M-21," Tao said. "You don't want the Union to find out the KSA has unregistered enhanced humans, we don't want to get in more fights with the Union. If you don't tell, we won't tell."

He could see their shock and fear when they realized that Tao knew they were unregistered, but even more startling than that was, "You've _fought_ the Union? And you're still here?"

"We don't have to tell you anything," M-21 reminded them. "You don't want to have info the Union would try and pry out of you, not with what _else_ they'd find out while questioning you."

"Enhanced humans in our country?"

"So what else is new?" he asked her. "Every country's had to let the Union walk right over them. At least we're not here to take your people."

"Then what _are_ you here to do?" The man asked before his partner could respond. "Please understand, modified humans like you, at a school, among students…"

"Stop acting like you care about the kids when you were planning to drag them into the KSA and put them in danger from the Union. And do you _want_ the Union to haul you in for questioning?" M-21 demanded, because it was like these people wanted to die! You learned damn quick not to ask stupid questions in the Union. "You keep your mouths shut and live to do your jobs, and we'll keep our mouths shut and our job protecting the kids. Now get lost, it's after hours and you don't have the Chairman's permission to be on campus."

"M-21," Tao said, "Maybe we should give them a way to get in contact?"

"Right," M-21 realized with another frown. Frankenstein gave him and M-24 a contact number before. He would probably do that now if he was here because he wouldn't want the Union to catch these guys. M-21 didn't want him to have to reveal that he was an enhanced human to these people, so they needed to take care of it.

Tao tossed Sangeen a cellphone. "It's secured," he told them. "If the Union's about to take you in, or you want our help making them think we enhanced you and the KSA didn't know anything about it… Or if you just want to say hi."

"Thanks…" Sangeen said skeptically, because that sounded too good to be true. No one needed the Union that mad at them, but the fact their group contained enhanced humans at all and claimed to not be with the Union meant the Union had to be mad at them anyway.

"No problem!" Tao said with a cheery wave. "Sorry about him, M-21's always cranky when people from secret organizations attack our students."

* * *

With Cerberus after Sangeen there was no way he'd be able to keep everyone safe with only this much power. He'd have to draw on the power within him. The werewolf heart.

"Ready?" M-21 growled under his breast, reaching for the RK-04/05 mask in his pocket. The masks should have been stupid, but heading out as a team to rescue someone from the Union, wearing an insignia that proved that M-24 was here with him… those things weren't worthless. M-24 wasn't worthless.

" _I got it, M-21."_

M-21 took a deep breath and _roared_ , letting go. He felt his anger at Cerberus turn into berserk rage and punched and clawed, trusting in M-24 to make sure he was attacking the right people. He couldn't hold the new stage of his transformation for very long, so he'd drop out of berserker mode before M-24 went back to sleep – his comrade still had to rest after M-21 manifested him. Even when M-21 wanted to tear apart the whole world for what it did to his comrades, he still listened to M-24.

* * *

When his head cleared he took a deep breath, filling his lungs full of air. His chest always felt strange afterwards, like it was the wrong size or something. He wondered if it had something to do with his heart, or it was just coming back down from the transformation even if it didn't have a ton of extra muscle.

He opened his eyes to see that M-24 had gotten him out of the enemy's range before M-21 snapped out of it, and Takeo was covering him with bullets so the enemy couldn't cut him up while he was distracted, just like they'd practice. He didn't see the other one.

"One down, RK-04!" came from Tao's communicator, so that answered that question. "You got this one on the ropes."

He shook out his arms and charged in, smirking when he saw how hard a member of Cerberus was working to avoid his claws. It wouldn't take the bastard long to figure out that M-21 was slower and weaker now, but for now he was ignoring Takeo's bullets _and_ Regis _._

Big mistake – and the agent's last one as the noble charged.

"What's going on here!" an angry man's voice yelled.

That woman was the commander of Cerberus, and that made the man the Twelfth Elder. " _Go to sleep, M-24."_

He felt his partner's hesitation, but, " _Good luck, M-21_."

Tao, Takeo and Regis seemed pretty fresh: if they could buy him enough time to transform a second time… Not that M-21 would get to be the one to take down the Elder. There was no way the others had missed all the fighting – Seira, Frankenstein and Raizel had to be on their way, the way they'd come to rescue everyone from DA-5. The problem was staying alive until they got here. M-21 would have liked to keep M-24 out until the cavalry arrived and he could be sure the others were safe, but that would have left him exhausted and then he'd be a liability, dragging the others down as they tried to cover him.

Seira was the first to arrive – well, technically Regis was, when he hadn't been with them when Sangeen called… Not 'called for help,' called to let them know that his cover was blown and they shouldn't come to his rescue even though if the Union got him, they could have broken him and got what he knew about them out of him. Probably Sangeen had planned to do his best to die instead of get captured. That wouldn't have been very hard, with these agents. The Union didn't train people to keep their victims _alive_.

…Oh no she didn't. M-21 smirked and jumped to the other roof to get out of Seira's way. The head of Cerberus was already dead for insulting Death Scythe. "Everyone ok?" he asked Regis and Yonsu as Sangeen, Takeo and Regis joined them.

"Aww, you were worried about us! M-24's gotten really good at watching your back," Tao reported.

M-21 nodded. He vaguely remembered being spurred to turn around a few times.

"At least you left _some_ for us," Regis said, glaring over in the direction of Seira's opponent. All that Union inelegance must be ticking off the little noble. He seemed in fighting form judging from the way he was eyeing the Elder – not the head of Cerberus, this was Seira's fight now, after someone insulted Death Scythe.

M-21 laughed mockingly at the shock on their faces when Seira summoned the Grim Reaper. Just like Seira to let Death Scythe have her after she insulted them, even though she'd insulted Seira too.

"A noble? How dare you attack my bodyguard? I'm a Union Elder."

"Really?" Frankenstein drawled. "What's a Union Elder doing running around all the way out here, getting into trouble? Does your Master know where you are?"

This Elder had a Master? Like Frankenstein?

M-21 and the others looked at each other. "Maybe we should move further back," M-21 said.

"Do you think five kilometers will be enough?" Tao wondered, only half joking.

"The house isn't _that_ far from here." Regis looked worried, and yeah he should be, because if the _house_ got destroyed by the fighting? Frankenstein was going to totally lose it.

"You should come with us," Takeo said, smiling at Yonsu and Sangeen.

They looked nervous, wondering why.

"The KSA lab got destroyed with your building, right?" Tao pointed out. "Come on, M-21 and I'll get you two patched up."

Regis was a little reluctant to leave when the houseowner was kicking that much ass – he was starry-eyed with admiration – but Seira made him come.

"When you said your job was protecting the kids," Sangeen asked, keeping an eye on Regis, "Did you mean those kids?"

"They're Ye Ran students, aren't they? It's our job," M-21 said, because sure, let the KSA think they were in South Korea bodyguarding some nobles getting an education. They'd worry less if there was some explanation for enhanced humans hanging around a school that didn't involve the kids being destined for Union labs.

Not that he cared if they worried, when they'd endangered the kids.

* * *

 _Canon, Tao's the one to speak up around people and M-21 mostly lets him take over social interaction. Or maybe just bows to the inevitable. He only speaks up around Yonsu and Sangeen when it's something he has strong emotions about._

 _Before Tao came along, M-21 might have been becoming more assertive – see the 'move the car' thing. Since here he regarded Tao and Takeo as adopted M-series he needed to look after because M-24 wasn't awake yet when they joined the household, he's doing the thing he does in combat – speaking up, ticking off the enemy._

 _This strengthens the good cop-bad cop dynamic, with M-21 not caring about playing nice/shutting people down, and then Tao's the friendly one by contrast, volunteering to help out and compromise while M-21 glares in a 'try anything I dare you' way. T2 like having someone who wants to protect them, so they don't mind, especially since M-21 will generally let them have it their way – or really is kind of helpless in the face of Tao, as per canon._


	6. Chapter 6

M-21 stared when he saw the person on the bed. Why did they look just like M-24?

He looked at Frankenstein as the person on the bed said his name with M-24's voice.

Frankenstein sighed and tilted his hand in the air like a scale wobbling when the two weights were nearly balanced and it could go either way. "It's possible for a human's soul to separate from the brain temporarily while they're still alive. The brain would keep generating soul, but 'new' and 'deliberately crippled' sums up the souls of all the Union's victims."

Raizel was just standing there with Regis and Seira, looking vaguely worried. Yeah, they both had to be worried they'd pronounced M-24 dead when he _wasn't_. They wouldn't have done that if they weren't certain, though. "Is he a fake?"

M-24's eyes widened with alarm and then concern. Yeah, if he was M-24 that sounded like what the Union might do.

Then the attack started, the way stress like that _would_ kick it off without pills.

"Two options," Frankenstein said, eyes flickering to where M-24 lay on the hospital bed in pain. "One, he's real, in which case," he glanced at M-21's hands, where the gauntlets appeared when M-21 summoned them, "reconnection is possible. Two, he's a Union product and probably won't be able to fight back."

So either way, M-24 might be able to get a body again.

"Dark Spear would be a way to spring any traps," Frankenstein offered.

Without risking M-24's soul. But if the person on the bed was also part of M-24, M-2 1 wasn't going to let him be eaten by Dark Spear.

" _What happens the next time you go berserk?"_ M-24 wanted to know.

" _Like you don't want to be alive again_." He had better not say he didn't want that, not for M-21's sake.

" _Yeah, but…_ " The timing was inconvenient.

" _Look, I'll figure out how to not go berserk so you don't have to take over. You'll be there to help me figure it out anyway, right?"_ M-24 would still have mind-control, and M-21 might have practiced fighting him off, but his berserk self was used to M-24 being there with him.

" _If he's me, he wouldn't want to take something that helps you protect yourself away, even if I can fix what's wrong with my body."_

" _So what, you'd stay separated?"_ Two M-24's, one beside him and one in his soul? It made him think of when there was more than one other M-series, and he was struck by the longing to have them back, but…

* * *

When the maybe-M-24 hacked into the lab computers, M-21 wasn't surprised, exactly. If anything, it was evidence he was the real thing. He and M-24 had hacked into Union computers several times, trying to find the names, and it made sense that M-24 would want to find out if Frankenstein was experimenting on him, after finding out that one of the people he'd asked M-21 to go with was a scientist.

He was still a little dismayed, because Frankenstein was a comrade, even though he knew that M-24 wouldn't know that. It wasn't like there was anything wrong with wrecking the Union scientists' days. Finding out they were on meds explained a lot, and was one of the reasons he and M-24 were so eager to wean themselves off the meds the Union gave _them_. If it was meds that kept the scientists monsters, then what was in the stuff prescribed to losers? Something to keep them brain-damaged, dumb and obedient?

* * *

"An assassin team, associating with disposable guys like us?" Was what M-24 said about Tao and Takeo.

M-21 snorted. "The assassins aren't any different from us. _All_ experiments are disposable to the Union, they just try to keep the assassins from figuring that out. All of DA-5 was supposed to get used up in an experiment to help Dr. Aris work on getting stronger, the head of Cerberus killed the ones that we hadn't finished off by the time she and her boss got there. The scientists at the Union are on meds to keep them from caring about the experiments, remember? Crombel didn't care about Mary any more than he cared about us, she was just dumb enough to think he did, same as the rest of _his_ assassin team. Even Crombel – to the single digit elders, he's just as disposable as an M-series. Tao and Takeo aren't stupid, they know they're not better than us."

M-24 stared at him for a moment.

"What?" M-21 wondered. "Anyway, I'm stronger than them, if that even matters. Crombel was an idiot who didn't know what he was doing – Frankenstein pointed me in the right direction to get rid of the stuff that was messing me up, so I have a lot more inherent power than Tao and Takeo. Some 'elite assassin team' if they're _still_ getting worked on to meet the standards of someone who knows what they're doing." He bumped M-24's shoulder with his fist. "Anyway, don't think they're looking down on you. They know we survived because we were tough, while DA-5 was _kept_ alive until it was time for their own boss to dispose of them."

"Pointed you in the right direction… M-21, you know how to do human enhancement?"

M-21 made a face. "Not _human_ enhancement, although I guess I've looked at what Tao's doing for Takeo. That hack Crombel stuck a werewolf heart in me, same way he based you on a noble. I've been getting rid of the rest of Crombel's work – I'm not owing that bastard anything. Take a look," he said, transforming his hand, letting M-24 see the fur, the shorter but stronger claws. "That's _without_ Crombel. If he wasn't incompetent as well as a bastard, you wouldn't be in pain like that. I wouldn't put it past him to mess us up on purpose so we needed the meds. I wonder if he actually _needs_ the meds they keep him on, or he's just too stupid to go off them."

If M-24 was a fake, there wasn't any reason not to show him the claws. M-21 fought with the gauntlets instead of them, anyway. And there was a reason to show him the claws, how much stronger M-21 was now – agents just cared about power, so if he knew he'd get stronger with Frankenstein than he was ever going to get with Crombel… "This isn't even my full transformation," he said. "I just don't want to wreck the uniform."

"That's a uniform? I wondered why you were wearing the same clothes as those two."

"Well, that and every time I'm in a fight my clothes get wrecked," M-21 said, holding up his claws. "If I lose a uniform Frankenstein'll replace it, so it doesn't make sense to spend my salary on waistcoats." He winced, because it must have worried M-24. Their clothing was some of the only self-expression they'd gotten access to, he remembered how they'd looked at each other the first time they got to pick from a pile of clothing for an outside mission, and when they first went shopping! "Tao spends his on electronics. I don't know what Takeo does with his." It was probably a good sign that M-24 asked about M-21's clothes, why he was wearing the same thing as the other agents, instead of wanting to know about M-21's powers, right?

He hesitated instead of saying, "You agreed that we should make them honorary M-series." He hadn't told this M-24 about the other M-24 yet, the one who was quiet in the back of his head, watching. This M-24 might insist on getting their souls merged or something so he could be sure he wasn't a fake or being used against M-21, and M-21 didn't want M-24 to sacrifice himself – there were two now, so if they merged they'd lose an M-24, and M-21 wasn't letting that happen. Not again. So instead what he did say was, "We're going to find their names too."

That craggy smile was so familiar. "Yeah," M-24 agreed, holding his hand out for a fist-bump, and M-21 couldn't blame himself for being tricked, not quite, when it was so much like talking with M-24. Different, but talking to the soul weapon in his head was different from talking to someone with a face and a body.

* * *

"There's no way he didn't figure out my password," M-21 said, looking numbly at the wreckage of the lab.

It made him feel violated all over again, Crombel getting his hands on what M-21 did to be _free_ of Crombel, maybe using _M-21's ideas_ to experiment on other people. " _I'm sorry, everyone,"_ he thought, because what bigger betrayal of the M-series could there be than being responsible for more people like them?

" _It's not your fault, M-21. He was supposed to be me and I still wasn't sure_."

Frankenstein reached out and patted him on the shoulder almost absently. "Everything about you four," he said to the Ms and the Ts, "Ultimately comes from me and my research. Taking research that was supposed to help our fellow humans," M-21 for M-24's sake, Tao for Takeo's, "and perverting it – that's the Union. It's not your fault – I'm the one with all the experience fending off their thievery. I should have secured your data along with mine."

"You didn't for our sake," M-21 said. "You think we haven't noticed that you haven't had anything to do with our data?" To keep them from feeling the way they felt now. "It's because we didn't trust you that you didn't offer."

"And it's because I couldn't be certain that you weren't like this M-24," a Union mole, "that I put extra security on my data. It should have occurred to me that you should take the same precautions, with a potential spy." Frankenstein shook his head. "There's no use pinning the blame on anyone, it's belonged to me since before you four were born."

"Hey, I'm the hacker, so I should have taken responsibility for computer security," Tao pointed out.

"So am I," M-21 reminded him. He felt even worse because he'd invited Tao to stay here, he was the reason Tao had research and data in these computers to get stolen. "We're going to tear that fake apart…"

"That's not why we're here," Takeo reminded them quietly. "Frankenstein."

"Yes?" the man asked, focusing on Takeo.

"We appreciate that you've left our bodies alone until now, left everything to do with them up to us," Takeo said. "But it's because of our weakness, our cowardice, that Raizel-nim had to spend his own life to save us. We want to get stronger."

Frankenstein sighed, dusting off his hands. "I have had some ideas, but I'll need to study your current conditions first. As soon as the new lab is fully operational, if you could scan yourselves, I'll start writing up a treatment plan for you to look over."

"Us too," M-21 said, hearing M-24's agreement in the back of his head. If they were getting experimented on, then so was he.

He was furious with the fake M-24, but then… he was a victim of Crombel's too, just like them. Maybe it wasn't entirely his fault he was dumb enough to think Crombel gave a damn about him, that he was better off going back to the Union than staying here. Heh, "I wonder if Crombel already killed him so no one else had that data."

"Quite possibly," Frankenstein agreed. "He wouldn't be the first spy the Union rewarded with death instead of thanks." He looked down for a moment, and M-21 wondered how many spies they'd flung at Frankenstein over the centuries.

It amazed him all over again that they'd taken him in after he put the kids in danger.


End file.
